Comment by peng | Hacker News Reader

Comment by peng | Hacker News Reader

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> $15 per audio hour may seem low, especially considering that one hour of audio may take up to 4 hours to transcribe. But when you look at the conversion rate, it’s not that bad. $1 USD converts to 83 Kenyan Shillings. I paid around $800 total for the transcribing, which converts to 66,400 Shillings. That’s about a month’s worth of rent in Nairobi, the largest city and capital of Kenya.

This bothers me. Yeah, rent and food is going to be cheap in Kenya, but an iPad will cost the same. There's a good chance it'll be costlier because of import taxes.

Of course, this is a unique case where transcriber had no feedback. In general though, you shouldn't be paying someone based on your opinion of their cost of living. It demonstrates a lack of respect, and shows that you don't treat them as an equal human being.

Maybe it's idealistic nonsense.

> It demonstrates a lack of respect, and shows that you don't treat them as an equal human being.

He paid the transcriber at a rate that the transcriber was willing to be paid at. If the transcriber didn't want to get paid $15 / audio hour, he could've simply walked away. Smart? Yes. Disrespectful? No.

> This bothers me. Yeah, rent and food is going to be cheap in Kenya, but an iPad will cost the same.

You do realise where iPads are built and how much those people make? :-)

Outsourcing work to cheaper places is part of this world, and sites like eLance bring the power to outsource to people like you and me instead of just letting large companies enjoy it.

Also, you don't know what job that Kenyan would have had to accept if it wasn't for eLance.

What's more, his figures work out to 5.3 weeks of work at 40hrs/week, for the equivalent of one month's rent (not one month's living expenses). Be a shrewd manipulator of globalization if you want, but don't try and justify away the raw deal you're giving someone to save a few bucks, especially considering those bucks would be far more valuable to the guy doing the work than the guy who is saving them.

A relative used to do transcription so while in the worst case it may take 4x as long (bad audio + intelligible speaker) he often worked at about twice real time. So that 15$ / could be anywhere from 4$/hour to 30$ an hour.

PS: At those exchange rates 66,400 Shillings = 800$/month rent which seem really high. I know people in the US paying under 600$ / month rent for fairly reasonable apartments near major city's.

Isn't this concept the whole rationale towards foreign outsourcing?

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